Netflix has a lot of shows and movies from which to choose. Like, a lot. Sifting through all the streaming options can cause chronic indecision, leaving us scrolling down the Netflix main page just trying to pick something to watch.
Instead of getting overwhelmed and rewatching a Netflix OG classic like Stranger Things, The Queen's Gambit, or The Crown, how about trying something new? Sure, even that selection can be overwhelming. But we've done the hard part of watching them, and can confidently vouch for these.
Here are best new Netflix original series released in the past 12 months.
1. Ripley
Opting for the icy black-and-white aesthetic of an expensive perfume ad was the first of many smart choices that Ripley creator Steven Zaillian made in this reworking of Patricia Highsmith's storied novel. If The Talented Mr. Ripley brings to mind the vivid colors of the over-ripened Italy in Anthony Minghella's lush 1999 film, you'll recognize from the first frame of Ripley that you're in a very different world this time around.
More film noir than sexy travelogue, Ripley sees the exceptional Andrew Scott (All of Us Strangers) taking on the role of Highsmith's infamous sociopathic grifter, out to insert himself into and eventually steal the life of shipping heir Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn, Emma) and his suspicious girlfriend, Marge (Dakota Fanning). The Italy they move through seems as cold as Ripley's heart, yet somehow the tension Zaillian wrings from Ripley's very bad antics stay as addictive and heart-racing as ever.
How to watch: Ripley is now streaming on Netflix.
2. Girls5eva
Originally airing on Peacock, Girls5eva has moved over to Netflix for its third season, which will hopefully give the criminally under-the-radar show the boost it's been so deserving of these past few years. Real-life Broadway icons Sara Bareilles (Waitress) and Renée Elise Goldsberry (Hamilton), alongside television funny ladies Paula Pell and Busy Philipps, star as the past-their-prime girl group Girls5eva. (They did have a fifth member, but she died.)
That stench of death and failure follows these four grown-ass women around — hilariously so! — as they try to reignite their singing careers two decades after their initial debut. And even their prime wasn't that hot! They were like fifth-tier TRL guests. Yet they plug away, half of them unburdened by shame, the other half cringing themselves to sleep every night. The show mines rich comedy from the disconnect between the youth that stardom feeds upon with the wisdom to know better — the latter being constantly, desperately shoved aside in hopes of just one more pop tart magazine spread.
How to watch: Girls5eva is now streaming on Netflix.
3. Physical: 100 (Season 2)
If you don't have any interest in watching South Korea's fittest and most beautiful people getting sweaty and fiercely competitive with one another, then I don't know what to tell you. This reality series competition sees a hundred of the country's buffest facing one another down in elaborately staged physical contests, like hanging from ropes and retrieving barrels from sunken ships. It's Ninja Warrior meets Squid Game (just, you know, not deadly like the latter). Most satisfyingly of all, the contestants are forced to smash plaster-sculpted busts of their own torsos with a sledgehammer when they lose. It's everything.
How to watch: Physical: 100 (Season 2) is now streaming on Netflix.
4. 3 Body Problem
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (aka the dudes behind Game of Thrones) are back and world-building again with 3 Body Problem, an adaptation of superstar sci-fi author Liu Cixin's trilogy of books. The world itself (most of the time) looks like our own — at first, anyway. Then the strange molded chrome VR headsets start showing up and taking the modern characters into a bizarre fantasy realm… And there are also lots of flashbacks to the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s. Somehow, all of this will explain why all of the stars in the night sky have begun blinking on and off.
There are lots of familiar faces here, like Benedict Wong (who most will recognize from his ongoing stint in the MCU), Jonathan Pryce, Eiza González (Ambulance, Baby Driver), plus Liam Cunningham and John Bradley have tagged along with their Game of Thrones hosts. But the real stars are Liu Cixin's big ideas. This is hard modern sci-fi, and it turns out to be a real pleasure to watch a scripted series embrace such a thing. Although it does have some fantasy elements, the pleasure here is feeling like it's the skin of our own world being peeled back to expose the microscopic threads barely holding this familiar reality together. (Until they don't. Just wait until you see the instantly iconic "boat scene.")
How to watch: 3 Body Problem is now streaming on Netflix.
5. The Outreau Case: A French Nightmare
If the recent Oscar-winning film Anatomy of a Fall piqued your interest in the French judicial system, then here is another opportunity to try and figure it out (although this doc surely paints it at its absolute worst). The Outreau Case: A French Nightmare is a true crime documentary series about a case that rocked a town in northern France back in the early aughts.
When a mother of four was accused of horrific child abuse, she began naming co-conspirators — and didn't stop. Somehow, Myriam Badaoui convinced everyone that there was a child abuse ring operating within the small town of Outreau, which led to a media circus and a modern-day witch hunt. Her claims were eventually rescinded in what one lawyer describes as "a judicial Chernobyl." This is the justice system at its cruelest and clumsiest, and it's an infuriating but riveting spectacle to watch.
How to watch: The Outreau Case: A French Nightmare is now streaming on Netflix.
6. Avatar: The Last Airbender
This is the latest attempt to bring Avatar: The Last Airbender to the screen in a way that satisfies long-time fans of the original Nickelodeon series. There was, of course, the sequel series, The Legend of Korra, as well as the seriously reviled live-action M. Night Shyamalan film from 2010. Netflix's version bridges the gap in more ways than one; by making it a live-action series, there's plenty of time for all of the storylines, with none of the cartoon!
Clearly trying to court Game of Thrones fans, Airbender 2024 Edition trucks in boatloads of exposition and characters to establish its wide, weird world as quickly as possible. The basic gist is there are Avatars who can "bend" the four elements of water, earth, fire, and air, and they use these kick-ass gifts to, well, kick one another's asses. The main villains are firebenders led by no less than the great Daniel Dae Kim, while the iconic main character of Aang keeps trying to snuff out their flame with his titular airbending.
How to watch: Avatar: The Last Airbender is now streaming on Netflix.
7. The Gentlemen
Billed as a spin-off of Guy Ritchie's 2019 rollicking crime film The Gentlemen, this series actually has no visible connection to any of those earlier exploits or characters. Sure, it's set in the same world of British criminals, but by that metric, everything Guy Ritchie has ever made would be a part of the same world — including his live-action Aladdin. (Riffraff! Street rat!) The Gentlemen does indeed fit right in with everything Ritchie's made before, except for one thing; it's genuinely fan-fucking-tastic.
Starring a never-better Theo James as the youngest brother of a noble family who gets unexpectedly handed the keys to the dukedom when his father dies, The Gentlemen sees that grand title come with some unexpected extras. Specifically, his father had been leasing the underground of the family's substantial plot of land to a marijuana syndicate, one led by Skins actress Kaya Scodelario (also never better). As the worlds of old money and new crash into each other, Ritchie unearths genuine satire from who he clearly sees as the real British criminals — the aristocracy. Every episode is wickedly funny and action-packed, with a vast cast of the kinds of big characters the director has long shown an affection for. The Gentlemen is peak Ritchie.
How to watch: The Gentlemen is now streaming on Netflix.
8. Dead Boy Detectives
Neil Gaiman first wrote the Dead Boy Detectives into an issue of his long-running Sandman comic series way back in 1991, and over the years they've appeared in various Vertigo comics, including their own stand-alone series. While we wait for the second season of Netflix's The Sandman, we'll have to make due with these Dead Boys. It's not a bad trade! Aging the characters up some (perhaps so we can feel better about finding them super cute), Dead Boy Detectives stars George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri as the adorable ghosts Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland, who rejected the afterlife so they could stay on Earth and investigate crimes. Unfortunately, they've got to keep an eye out for Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), who's determined to drag them off their spot on this semi-mortal coil. A totally normal concept, right? Thankfully the show embraces that silliness — it's very Buffy-ish in tone, just with the added bonus of 2024 special effects and Netflix money. A deadly good time!
How to watch: Dead Boy Detectives comes to Netflix April 25.
9. Griselda
Based on the true story of the infamous Colombian drug trafficker Griselda Blanco, this six-episode mini-series starring Sofía Vergara follows the rise and inevitable fall of the gangster as she spread cocaine across the U.S. starting in the 1980s. So, not quite a Modern Family spin-off, then! Blanco was a very, very bad lady indeed, but Vergara gives the role the antihero Breaking Bad treatment, making us root for this woman's awful antics until we realize we're in too deep. There is significant overlap between the creative teams behind Griselda, Narcos, and Narcos: Mexico, but Griselda is a stand-alone series — and one that Vergara makes into a riveting drama.
How to watch: Griselda is now streaming on Netflix.
10. Chicken Nugget
This 10-episode comedy series from South Korea (based on a digital comic known as a webtoon) is about a woman who gets turned into a chicken nugget. Yes, really. Starring actress Kim You-jung as Choi Min-ah, the girl-turned-nugget in question, Chicken Nugget follows the adventures of Min-ah's father (Ryu Seung-ryong) and an intern at his company (Ahn Jae-hong) who had a crush on her back when she wasn't a nugget, as they try to turn Min-ah back into a human person. This series is like a high-concept '80s movie if Salvador Dalí had written it — surreal and deeply strange, and one you likely won't forget any time soon. Unless you find yourself turned into a chicken nugget, in which case all bets are off.
How to watch: Chicken Nugget is now streaming on Netflix.
11. Supersex
Don't watch this one with your parents, kids! A wild telling of the tale of real-life Italian adult entertainment star Rocco Siffredi, Supersex is about as graphic as a Netflix show can go. That title ain't lying, y'all! Starring the extremely un-shy actor Alessandro Borghi (Suburra: Blood on Rome) as Siffredi, the series focuses on his rise to porn prominence with a hefty and welcome dose of surrealism; creator Francesca Manieri was clearly more interested in the idea of Siffredi and what he represents than the boring A-to-B specifics. But mostly it's just nice to watch a show in this day and age that isn't afraid of sex. This one thrusts right past all of the online discourse, hard as a rock.
How to watch: Supersex is now streaming on Netflix.
12. Furies
If you're a fan of Luc Besson's over-the-top action movies – think La Femme Nikita, The Fifth Element, and Scarlett Johansson turning into sentient goo in Lucy – then Furies should be right up your alley. From French showrunners Jean-Yves Arnaud and Yoann Legave, Furies is eight episodes of chaotic action mayhem about a normal young woman named Lyna (Lina El Arabi) who gets sucked into an underground conspiracy linking all six of the Parisian crime families. It turns out there's a secret society of peacekeepers whose job it is to keep the balance between the houses, and Lyna has that special something they want. Before you know it, she's flipping around, kicking ass on top of speeding trains. You know, the usual. Basically, it's wildly entertaining nonsense — very much like a French Fast and the Furious at times.
How to watch: Furies is now streaming on Netflix.
13. One Day
Based on the David Nicholls' novel that was previously adapted into a 2011 film, One Day stars Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall as sometime-lovers Emma and Dexter, whose lives — together and apart — we watch unfold across two decades. The hook is that every episode revisits the two on the same day, July 15, the anniversary of the day they first met. That's a concept that works far better as a series than it did in the rush of a two-hour movie, really enveloping us in the saga of their relationship. But none of that would matter if the leads didn't have killer chemistry; thankfully, Mod and Woodall have a chemistry lab explosion's worth. They buoy this story across all 14 episodes, and they'll have you weeping with joy and heartbreak every day of the way. A real romance for the ages.
How to watch: One Day is now streaming on Netflix.
14. The Tourist (Season 2)
Originally a BBC series, The Tourist stars Jamie Dornan as a hot Irishman who wakes up with amnesia in an Australian hospital. First, he's got to sort out what happened — you know, all the fun "I have amnesia" stuff. But also per usual, his past didn't consist of an office job and stamp-collecting. He's being hunted by dangerous folks, and he's got to sort out his personhood on the run.
There's more running and figuring out his shit throughout Season 2, and the show continues to be an ace showcase for all the facets of Dornan — an underrated actor who, it turns out, is actually more than just a hot Irishman. The Tourist lets him be funny and dramatic and dig into lots of action scenes, all the while being supernaturally good-looking. There's also a killer supporting cast, including Danielle Macdonald (go watch the movie Patti Cake$ right now if you've never seen it) and Olwen Fouéré (from Mandy and the 2022 Texas Chainsaw reboot).
How to watch: The Tourist (Season 2) is now streaming on Netflix.
15. Young Royals (Season 3)
Well before the movie version of Red, White & Royal Blue came out (but after the book), there was Young Royals, a soapy Swedish series about a gay princeling (Edvin Ryding) falling for a (gasp) scholarship student named Simon (Omar Rudberg) at their boarding school. The third and final season of the show arrived in March, giving us more of the sweet teen romance the show excels at — the sort that actual teenagers crave and those of us slightly older than that demographic watch now wondering, "What if?" I can't imagine having shows like this and Heartstopper when I was a wee gay princeling.
How to watch: Young Royals (Season 3) is now streaming on Netflix.
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